I’ve always wondered why writers do so many of the voice over narration of photography online. It seems that the photographer is as much if not more so of an authority on the topic. It seems to further subjugate the photographer as not worthy of being an authority on a subject.

But, I sometimes feel as if some of the best multimedia efforts I’ve made to date have gone poof, into cyberland, and I wonder, do folks “get it?”

But, perhaps this to be expected, as we’re in Magellan territory here, and are working in a vacuum to some degree.

-Bob

Copying bad television online is just being lazy. Our audience is visually educated by TV, movies, magazines and ads; we should acknowledge this and produce quality work that captures their imaginations and hearts.

There are great, fun ways to tell stories these days. I spend more time these days trying to expand how our print journalists think about telling stories, demonstrating how we can better tell stories online and in print.

The key, will be quality. More often than not, quality takes time. Either thinking things through beforehand or in “production time” after leaving the office and returning. Now, more than ever, workflow becomes an issue. If a story can best be told with video, then shoot that. If it is a single, get in done and move on. If a story grows as you are covering it, communicate back to the office and adjust as needed.

My complete diatribe and response at my blog(journal?).

NOT that all that stuff isn’t cool and fun. And NOT that video isn’t important, or that we shouldn’t embrace all the new tools at our disposal. But that in the end I want someone to remember the story I told not whether it was done with Flash or used video or had lots of cool buttons and Google maps.

This evening I read, in print, a great little story from the New York Times:
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/us/18land.html
It was the kind of read that kept me from putting my kids to bed until I had finished, the kind of story that I demanded my wife read, that just made me feel good about journalism and life and writers.

Assuming that quality will win out – then it seems to me it will be the quality of the storytelling – in whatever form – not the form itself that will matter.

best
will

The multimedia aspect – I think many of us are on the edge of being too old to understand. It is all about gestalt – the entirety of being. The aiblity to move from vision to words to absorbing it all at once as a single unit. The older generation is still caught up in it’s own limitations of time and space – the new generation lives electronically. While we are learning, they are “being.”

Hope this makes sense…there are days when I am able to make the leap of faith and understand what I just said above…and other days when I feel I need the comfort of a good old fashioned tightly formated news story, told in old TV style.

Zach makes a good point about the “interactive” part of multimedia and wanting to “bring something new to the table.”
His comments regarding the “best”going unnoticed is interesting. We seem to want to define what is “best” – but the general public isn’t noticing. Maybe we need to find out what the public wants or just admit we are examining our navels. I remember a point in TV back in the late 80′/early 90′s where editing got so precise and down to the frame and the minutest movements within the frame that only the most experienced editors could identify “excellence.” That was navel examination at its worst.

I guess the answer is to loosen up, listen and learn from anyone and everyone.

I was thrilled to find this, because I too am teaching myself, just like all of you, while learning to change the way we tell stories. And although I’m new to this, I have found myself with the same concerns: that too many in the hereforto “print” world were making bad television.

Like the photographers who lament the passing of one great still picture that told a thousand words, I am a writer, a reporter, who hears the cries that my words alone will no longer suffice.

Yet what an exciting time for all of us. Those 20 pictures that never used to be published were probably just as worthy as the one that ran across the center of the page. Now, every day is an opportunity for a photo essay in slide show form.

As a writer, many times I had been just a little jealous of video being able to actually show the emotion of what I was trying to describe. Now, I do have the opportunity to show, rather than just tell.

But I agree that we need to find our own place, and not follow in a particular form, just because it is comfortable. It’s a time to be adventurous, taking the best from cinema and television and print and molding them together into our own high standards of journalism. TV has its shortcomings, and cinema can tend to rely too much on reinactments and overdramatization.

I covered a hearing in a murder case recently, where I used the written story to describe the overall picture but used one minute of edited video to convey the emotional testimony of one witness – a burly deputy sheriff from a rural community tearing up as he described helping his fallen boss. I used the testmony as the voice-over, cutting to crime scene pictures and giving a sense of the emotion and place. It was just a snippet of the entire story but it added to the overall package.

What I love about this is letting our sources tell their own stories. Through our particular skills, whether they be rooted in photos or words, we can use our sharp eyes and our strong interviewing skills and the way we know how to tell stories to bring information to our audience in a way to help them better understand the world around them.

It’s what we’ve always done, really, but now we have more tools to rely upon in doing it. To me, this is all just a natural progression from scrawling on the side of cave walls.

It is an exciting time, and we will find our own unique ways to convey our stories, which may neither totally follow television or the cinema but one as individual as the people behind the lens or keyboards.

And thank you for these forums, blogs, or spaces to share and communicate as we all teach ourselves new skills and find our way in an exciting time.

I tried my hand at video a while ago, but found that at that station we were simply the geeks with a camera and were told what to shoot and when and how… sheesh… it was so boring. Now that station has very accomplished video guys who can really astound every once in a while.

I do agree with the above sentiment that some new paths will include interesting, intuitive, or even non-sequential navigation with viewer participation. Let the visitor get the details of the story in the manner that makes sense to them. Discover. Process. Learn.

This is a great resource for those of us looking for a source to other sources. Thanks guys, you are doing great work!

I agree, too. It’s taken a while to get here. We’ve been treading water for many years with spurts of greatness and a whole lot of potential; either resources, technology, experience or a combination of all three are holding us back.

I hope shooters and multimedia producers take your challenge to push their creative boundaries.

But I also agree with Zach Wise and Seth Gitner who posted comments on Richard’s post: At the same time, we need to be challenging ourselves in non-linear storytelling. THIS is where Web video can blow past TV video in both presentation and value.

As we continue to develop audio, video, google maps and databases and then figure out how to best interweave them into a story, I truly think we’re sitting on the tipping point where soon we’ll be able to look back and see how far we’ve come in creating multimedia.

At my newspaper we just hired a managing editor for online. This is a position we have needed to have someone to fight for expanded multimedia ‘exploration’ and innovation at the highest levels of leadership. Some interesting times are ahead, one way or another.

is video — multimedia? or is it one part of the whole — the whole being — multimedia storytelling — I almost wish Richard did not have “shooter” in the name of this site —

he is limiting the type of multimedia storyteller out there to those who “shoot”

i guess http://www.multimediastorytelling.com is already taken.

;P

what about the amazing interactive storytellers out there that aren’t shooters?

As multimedia storytelling evolves and as still shooters morph into videojournalists will the storytelling evolve? yes.

It will get better —

Print reporters are starting to shoot video and some are picking it up quickly — we’ll start developing audience around our video content — we’ll embed the video in with our content and the audience — the reader — the viewer will have more information to help them get through the story — much like a break out box does in print.

maybe that short video will act like a mug does for a story — it will provide more information.

Multimedia storytelling is evolving — we just need to be open to new ideas and others getting involved and get more and more journalists to see what the web can do for a story.

Stories will become interactive as the skills of our storytellers heighten and video will be just one part of that final piece of multimedia.

-seth

Cyndy, the best TV photographers have amazing storytelling skills and produce work that rarely gets seen, unfortunately. I always encourage still photographers to pick the brains of TV photographers who they recognize as being excellent.

I remember how things were ten years ago. Those of us moving into DV, as the first cameras like the Sony VX1000 and Canon XL-1 were coming out, were considered to be heretics by most people in the photojournalism community. People like Dirck Halstead were looked at as loons. When we covered the White House it was quite interesting to see that the people who were most intrigued by what Dirck and I were doing were the older photographers, always looking for a challenge, and not the younger ones looking to the glory days of photojournalism now long gone.

At the first Platypus workshop in 1999, which was held at the same time as the NPPA TV workshop in Norman, Oklahoma, the broadcast TV folks thought the photographers walking around with XL-1 cameras looked ridiculous. I will never forget on graduation day when legendary videojournalist Darrell Barton, the guy who invented the style of TV shooting seen on CBS’ ’48 Hours’, came into the classroom of graduating ‘Platypi’ and expressed how wowed he had was by what he had seen. Darrell knew that things were not going to be the same (in that first Platypus class were the Turnley brothers, Don Doll, Eddie Keating and others. Two weeks later David Turnley was off on assignment for ABC news Nightline to shoot a video essay on the refugees in Kosovo, combining stills with video).

The mistake some people are now making is adopting the failed TV model of telling stories. Ask the best shooters in the broadcast world if they are satisfied with the way their work is shown and you will see. So why repeat the same thing on the Web?

Last fall Dirck met with the publisher of the DMN, who told him that David Leeson is the most important person there, as he is helping to revamp the way things are done and that could ultimately help save the paper.

We are happy that David will be our keynote speaker at the spring Platypus workshop in two weeks.

On another note, I really appreciate Richard’s mention of ‘Waging Peace’ . We worked hard on that one at The Pilot. Photographer Chris Tyree’s mission in Djibouti was to shoot primarily stills but also to do some video (we trained Chris at the Platypus workshop last year). He also carried an Edirol audio recorder. When he returned we decided to do a combination package of stories: stills with video;video; stills and natsound audio with a narration track that was written to the stills; and a slideshow with audio. I edited the entire package in Final Cut Pro over several weeks. The audio narration was done by reporter Kate Wiltrout after the visual narrative had been established. The natsound collected with the Edirol was layered with it. We attempted to edit the entire package in a cinematic form.

We must be bold and try to do new things with the new tools and opportunities.

As change occurs a new type of storytelling will emerge. One that will take photojournalism to that next level. Photojournalists need to recognize that this is happening and jump on board.

Don’t be afraid to experiment.

Don’t be afraid to innovate.

-Seth

please send me some links to some cool work!

in full: Web log or Weblog online journal where an individual, group, or corporation presents a record of activities, thoughts, or beliefs. Some blogs operate mainly as news filters, collecting various online sources and adding short comments and Internet links. Other blogs concentrate on presenting original material. In addition, many blogs provide a forum to allow visitors to leave comments…

Sounds like you fit in just fine…